Why? | “These Few Presidents”

ART OF SONG
Why?
“These Few Presidents”
Alopecia
2008 | anticon.

I like hip-hop; a lot of people like hip-hop. A lot of people claim to like hip-hop. A lot of people hate hip-hop. A lot of people claim to like hip-hop but hate rap. Some people think rap is violent and hip-hop isn’t. People don’t know the difference between the two. Most people (including myself) don’t know shit enough about hip-hop to really make a justified claim. I know this. I still like hip-hop.

Instead of discussing the merits of the genre, or attacking it because Q-Tip doesn’t shred a guitar, and Clipse sold cocaine, and therefore obstructs the morality of our kids, I’m going to make a claim that’s more fun to debate: anticon. founder Jonathan “Yoni” Wolf (aka Why?) is a contender for the greatest active lyricist in music. And he raps!…sort of.

“These Few Presidents” is the third track from last year’s brilliantly morbid Alopecia, and one that best exhibits what Why? is all about. In his somewhat nasally, sneer of a voice, Wolf rap-sings “At your house/ the smell of our still living human bodies/ and oven gas/ you pray to Nothing out loud/ two first names and an ampersand/ embroidered proudly on a kitchen towel.” In a single line, he hits on: 1) impending death 2) the human desire for marriage 3) fear of commitment 4) uncertainty in a higher power 5) the perceived simplicity of intimacy. And none of these themes are buried; the listener doesn’t have to dig them out from a pile of symbols and non sequiturs the way Bob Dylan, Conor Oberst, Silver Jews’ David Berman, or any non-ODB member of the Wu requires.

Luckily, “These Few Presidents” doesn’t implode immediately after these first lines. Wolf continues a succession of lines in the same rhyme scheme and rhythm, building into the chorus: “These few presidents/ frowning in my pocket/ can persuade no God/ to let me let you talk.” Again, Wolf effortlessly hits on the heavy: the futility in trying to let money lessen fear, futility in prayer, and some kind of hopelessness.

“These Few Presidents” stands as a testament to the fact that hip-hop (or rap, instrumental spoken word, rhyme-y word sounds, et cetera) isn’t as self-limiting as many perceive it to be. Lyricists like Wolf choose to work in the genre for a reason: it allows a writer to best exhibit their poetry, whatever that content may be. And Wolf’s poetry is really, really good; so good that I would happily sit down and read it without music, which can be said about very few lyricists (including Dylan – I’m sorry, I don’t care what the joker or the clown is unless he’s singing it).

By the end of “Presidents,” the lyrics are engraved into your head, and you forget that what you’ve just listened to even fits into a genre. You don’t care how the beat was constructed (with live drums), or why there’s no distorted guitar (but there is a guitar), who produced it (he did),  or why it even needs to rhyme so tightly (ask Wordsworth). It’s just a song about love, being human, facing death, and living in the 21st century.

by Max Sebela